Played with Kaylee. Sun came out, and I walked on my feet and heard with my ears. I ate the bits, the bits stayed down, and I work. I function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away. The sun goes dark and chaos has come again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?!

River ,'War Stories'


The Great Write Way, Act Three: Where's the gun?

A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.


Beverly - Apr 10, 2008 3:31:02 pm PDT #16 of 6681
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.

(I'm about 20 words over--my machete needs sharpening, the weedwhacker needs new string.)

Twenty levels down and it was stronger--thrumming on her skin, shimmering in her blood. Her nape and arm hair stirred. Three past twenty and it began to wane, so back up again, one level, two. Ceiling light corruscated, seen from her eye corners; the effect intensified as she went. The way ended in a door--unlocked. She swung it open and her breath caught--there was no floor beyond, only a narrow catwalk that circled a vast open well, door after door opening onto it above and below, to her left and her right.

Ahead, suspended of its own energy, a sphere, soft yet brilliant, invisible threads reaching from it out, out, up, down, around, over, under, all.

(See Beverly use up all the prepositions!)


sarameg - Apr 10, 2008 5:40:55 pm PDT #17 of 6681

OK, so a teenage me wrote this in 1991 after the death of my 90 year old grandpa, father of 6, the last of that generation, watching his kids interact. I don't attempt poetry any more, but I've got a collection from that time. But the "center" thing got me. So I'll abase myself:

The ties are broken
Center of the wheel
Unbolted.
The spokes should
Fly out.
Yet they don't.
Love binds them
Pain's grasp seizes them.
All together they withstand
They cannot be apart.
They will not forget.


SailAweigh - Apr 10, 2008 5:46:27 pm PDT #18 of 6681
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb

sarameg, that is really beautiful. Thanks for sharing it.


sarameg - Apr 10, 2008 5:49:17 pm PDT #19 of 6681

Careful, you don't want me to inflict the rest of the 20 or 30 (I've not counted) poems from that era;) It was 15-19 or so.


sarameg - Apr 10, 2008 6:00:35 pm PDT #20 of 6681

Actually, it occurs to me I should start airing them for critique. I was so self conscious then, I shared them with no one. My parents read them, but they are biased.

I'm curious. We'll see, I probably haven't read them in a decade.


Susan W. - Apr 10, 2008 6:04:33 pm PDT #21 of 6681
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

I like that, sarameg.


Susan W. - Apr 10, 2008 6:06:26 pm PDT #22 of 6681
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

And a character piece, exploring one of my protagonists:

The general still rides as hard as any man in the army, but it’s been a year since he beat Jack at sword practice. Today he’s forty, the son of a father who never saw fifty. He has no house, no wife, no sons, nothing a man of his years should have--only an army that would fall apart without him.

He doesn’t lack for companionship. He has Jack for conversation, Margaret in his bed, though not as often as he’d like, and an army that marches at his whim. But he is alone. The center is a solitary point.


Amy - Apr 10, 2008 6:14:39 pm PDT #23 of 6681
Because books.

We're rocking the new thread! Awesome.

I have poetry like that, sarameg. It's handwritten in a folder somewhere (I think) and there are only two that I don't cringe to think about. I love poetry, but it's not my, uh, medium.

Post them, though! I love to read poetry.


Liese S. - Apr 10, 2008 6:23:24 pm PDT #24 of 6681
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

How deeply amused am I that with the one thread we could kill with haiku and be on topic, we didn't? Deeply amused.

Great drabbles, though, all.

You should definitely post them, sarameg. I've got volumes and volumes from that age, probably quite horrid. But I always think one should share. Writing wants to be free!


Beverly - Apr 10, 2008 6:43:25 pm PDT #25 of 6681
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.

Writing wants to be free!

Next thread title!